Tagged News: top secret

Recently, WarCry had the chance to talk to Acclaim CEO Howard Marks. We received an update on his company's quest to bring the Eastern MMO business model to Western shores and got a peek at how 2Moons, 9Dragons, BOTS!! and Dance! Online have fared on the open market.

9Dragons

What "free-to-play" really means is that all Acclaim's games are free to download and can be played without the player ever laying down a dime. In 2Moons, for example, the company makes money through in-game advertising that appears in the user interface. In 9Dragons, players can play for free, but also can buy upgrades and customization items securely through Acclaim.

Marks emphasized through that the company is committed to actual free-to-play. One common consumer complaint with the model is that while some games advertise their games as such, many build in an artificial gameplay wall where a player basically is forced to buy items or coin to progress in the game. He says that none of Acclaim's games do this, nor will there ever be any artificial walls.

Read more after the leap.

AGDC gave us the chance to talk to David Perry of Acclaim about his community designed and now developed MMO project Top Secret. Perry - who is also bringing 2Moons to North America - announced at the conference that they would hold a $1,000,000 contest for indie groups to develop the game his community designs.[blockquote]
Acclaim has opened the doors to hobbyist and independent developers worldwide and challenged them to create the Top Secret project. Teams are allowed to use whatever engine they like and try to create the best, most faithful version of the game possible. The winning studio gets up to $1,000,000 in prizes, primarily to pay the bill of whatever engine they selected, but also a $100,000 advance and a standard contract. They will also receive royalties on the project itself.

Ultimately, Acclaim views the winner as their first "studio". To date, they've been adapting foreign games, but down the line, whoever pulls out the victory will hopefully work on original Acclaim projects.[blockquote]Read more after the click.

Early this year, Acclaim and David Perry announced the Top Secret project. This was a game where fans got to design their own title and contribute to its development. Originally, Acclaim was going to hire a a development team to put it together, but now they're offering $1,000,000 to the independent development team that does the best job on this bike racing MMO. It's a competition within a competition.

We have many more details in our AGDC interview with Perry, which you can read here in the coming days.

David Perry's Top Secret project has been going for a few months now and today an email flew to update the community of developers who are at work on this community driven racing MMORPG.

The Top Secret Community Game Design Project keeps rolling along. At the beginning we said we were designing a racing game. Well, we were right. and we were wrong. Because we are designing RACING like you've never seen.

We're designing Beasts to Ride. Riders to ride them. Cards to collect and enhance our game play. PvP and PvE tracks and modes. Weapons, Skills, Obstacles. Crazy tracks to challenge our players. Yes, it all started with a racing game, but it's something else again now. A game like no other we've ever seen. If you haven't seen it lately, come to the forums and see what's happening.

Read more after the click.

David Perry has penned a new Director's Letter for Acclaim's "Top Secret" project. The project is not a secret, this is just the name of the community driven development that the company is trying. It's like American Idol for game development. Perry directs and hundreds of thousands of people use the boards to define the game. Most the heavy lifting is done by an internal Acclaim studio.

Recently, it was announced that the game would be an MMO racing game.

Click below for the most recent update.

David Perry's latest Director's Letter has flown to mailboxes for the "developers" of Top Secret. Top Secret enables the community to get into development of a racing MMO. Recently, the message boards were put online to begin the process of design, art, code and other contributions to this interactively developed game.

Read more below.

David Perry's Top Secret project is officially underway. Previously revealed to be a racing MMO in his last Director's Letter, Perry sent out another last night that opens the forums and begins the process for the 23,500 people who have already signed up. They are nearly a quarter of the way to their cap of 100,000.

To read his second letter, click the link below.

David Perry's Top Secret has relaunched their website with information on the upcoming community developed MMO project. The article tells the world officially - after first revealing it in a community letter last week - that the game is in fact a racing MMO.

You can read more at the official Top Secret website.

In the third of three articles from GDC based on our chat with Acclaim CEO Howard Marks, we look at Top Secret. A revolutionary community designed and developed MMO project, Top Secret may well become the American Idol of video game competitions... or it may fail completely. With something this new, it's hard to tell, but having just announced the project, it was fascinating to see where Acclaim stands on it.

"I'm really happy that people are not happy," Acclaim CEO Howard Marks paradoxically proclaimed. Indifference was what could have killed Top Secret and so far, that is the one thing they have not seen. Strong opinions on both sides of the equation have been good news for the team.

Directed by David Perry, Top Secret is a collaborative project where the first 100,000 people to sign up gain the ability to influence the design, code, art and general direction of a fully funded MMO project. They post their ideas, their models, their code and Acclaim's team judges the best and imports it into the game. Some have mistaken Top Secret for a cheap way out of paying developers, which Marks insists it is not, noting the fully funded development team that does most the day-to-day development.

Click below to read more.

Today, we have a copy of a lengthy letter David Perry sent out to the Top Secret project community. Within, he describes the goals and guidelines of the project and reveals what kind of MMO this will be: racing.

The choice is surprising, but he notes that this is a kind of project that everyone should have an opinion on. Long hours of MarioKart tell me that he may have a point.

The letter is lengthy, but worth the read if this project interests you. If you've not signed up for Top Secret and wish to get your hand into game development, check out the Top Secret website

Click below to read his letter.